IntroductionThe Abrahamic Fallacy is the belief that Abraham is a figure of unity for Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The
phrase “Abrahamic Religions” has become very popular as a cover-term
for these three faiths. It is particularly popular among Jewish and
Christian progressives on the one hand, and Muslim apologists on the
other. The term implies a kind of unity or brotherhood across the three
faiths.More
broadly, the term “Abrahamic religions” has become the standard term,
both in comparative religions and popular parlance, to refer to the
three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in
contrast, for example, to Indian religions and East Asian religions.In
essence the claim embodied by the expression is that Abraham is
“shared” as a point of common origin by all three monotheistic
religions, and naming him as their shared identity is meant to signal
that these three faiths are linked together in some kind of theological
continuity. The
expression is in fact used in a variety of ways. Adam Dodds points out
that for some, it is simply a cover term for the grouping of Islam,
Christianity and Judaism, a kind of functional shorthand without any
intended theological content. Others – perhaps the majority of writers –
use the phrase to imply some degree of “historical and theological
commonality,” perhaps unspecified. For still others the term implies an
intimate unity, namely that it is one and the same God who has authored
the Bible and the Qur’an, and the same eternal message is presented in
both books.But
is the construct of “Abrahamic religion” helpful, or quite the
opposite, a bad idea? And specifically, is the multi-faith Abraham the
same person found in the pages of the Torah, or is he merely a product
of wishful thinking?Abraham in Genesis: Judaism and ChristianityTo
be sure, Christianity and Judaism do have the Abraham of Genesis in
common. This is the Abraham of covenant and promise, the “father of
many,” and specifically “father” or “patriarch” of Israel. The Abraham
of the Bible is a symbol of God’s benevolence to the nations.No
model of moral perfection, the Abraham of Genesis is nevertheless also
the prototype or forerunner for Israel of someone in intimate, personal,
covenantal relationship with God, a state to which the Hebrew
scriptures testify on almost every page.While
the overlap between Judaism and Christianity in their appreciation of
Abraham – embodied in the Genesis account – is profound, there are
important differences in how these two faiths understand Abraham.
Neither Judaism nor Christianity is content to read Abraham solely
through the lens of Genesis. For
Christians it is Paul who frames Abraham, casting him as someone
justified by faith: “For Abraham believed and the Lord reckoned it to
him as righteousness” (Romans 4:22, Genesis 15:6). Thus the Pauline
Abraham might be considered as the prototype of a de-Judaized, Gentile
Christian liberated from the shackles of the rabbinical Law. While
for Jews Abraham’s paternity is through literal descent, Christians
consider themselves to be Abraham’s children “by faith,” following Paul
who calls Abraham the “father of all who believe” (Romans 4:16). This
involves a new lineage for Gentiles, or as Paula Frederikson put it,
“Christians are children of Abraham, but not from Isaac and Jacob.”On
the other hand, Jews read Abraham through the Oral Traditions (the
Talmud), which portray him as an idol-destroying monotheist, and a
forerunner of Torah observance. A
story recorded in a Jewish midrash tells of how the young Abram smashed
his father’s idols, and then told his father that the one remaining
idol had attacked and destroyed all the others. The father disagreed,
saying that the idol was only a statue, thus validating Abram’s
contention that his father’s idols were no gods at all.This
story is not found in the Bible. In reality there is nothing in Genesis
that unambiguously portrays Abraham as an exclusive monotheist or
opposed to idol worship. To be sure, there is an implication in Genesis
18:19 that Abraham walked in accordance with God’s laws – which implies
rejection of idolatry:

For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.

Here
Genesis states that God has chosen Abraham for the purpose of
establishing his generations to do “what is right and just” as a part of
a covenantal relationship. However what cannot be deduced from Genesis
is that Abraham actually lived out this commission in an exemplary way,
nor that this involved an explicit rejection of idolatry. (The first
time the theme of rejection of idolatry crops up in Genesis is when
Abraham’s grandson Jacob tells his household in Genesis 35:2, “Get rid
of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change
your clothes.”)In
Joshua 24:2-3 it is implied that Abraham was chosen by God out from the
religious context of his idol-worshipping father, Terah – implying that
Abraham made a break with this practice – but here again, it is not
stated explicitly that Abraham renounced idol worship. Indeed there is
no reference to idols or other “gods” in the Abraham story.Moreover
there is no code of conduct, which might be called a “law,” described
in connection with the Abraham of Genesis. In God’s engagement with
Abraham in Genesis, there is no impartation of a system of ethics. What
is there is covenantal relationship: favour, promise and references to
Abraham’s faith and his notable acts of obedience (e.g. Genesis 12:4,
15:6, 22). The only regulation reported for Abraham’s religion, apart
from the Lord being his family’s god, was the custom of circumcising
males (Genesis 17:13), instituted as a sign of covenant faithfulness.Although
there is nothing explicit in Genesis which portrays Abraham as opposed
to idols, what is of great relevance, in contrast to the competing idol
worship of the surrounding nations, is the incident of the binding of
Abraham’s son Isaac, in which God intervened to spare Isaac and
symbolically put an end to child sacrifice, replacing this with the
sacrifice of an animal instead. This act anticipates the instruction in
the Law of Moses that Israelites had to “redeem” a firstborn son through
an animal sacrifice (Exodus 22:29, 34:19-20). Later
of course, for Christian theology, the story comes full circle when God
replaces temple sacrifices of animals with the offering of his only
Son, Jesus, on the very same mountain, Moriah, where Abraham attempted
to sacrifice Isaac.The binding of IsaacThe Akedah,
or binding of Isaac, was important in defining the distinct identity of
the Israelites. The Hebrews were culturally closely related to the
surrounding Canaanites, and linguistically virtually indistinguishable
from them. Hebrew is classified as a Canaanite language (others were
Phoenician, Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite). Ancient Canaanite religion
is well known for the practice of child sacrifice. The Akedah
account of the interrupted sacrifice of Isaac — and the subsequent
practice of redeeming the firstborn son — set the Israelites apart from
their Canaanite neighbours, and elevated the worship of the God of
Abraham above that of Molech, who welcomed human sacrifice. The
practice of child sacrifice was at certain times also a Hebrew
practice, an issue which much concerned the prophets (Jeremiah 19:4-5;
Ezekiel 16:20-21). This practice continued among the Israelites right up
until the Babylonian exile and was one of the reasons for it (Psalm
106:37-39). Solomon himself built a temple to Molech, and this was only
torn down in the reforms of Josiah (2 Kings 23:13).God’s intervention in the Akedah
could be regarded as an anti-idolatry polemic (against Canaanite
child-sacrifice practices). But if so, this is an indirect reference to
idolatry, and apart from this, Genesis offers us little evidence to
regard Abraham as a model monotheist. A follower of God, yes; a trenchant anti-idolator, no.So,
in summary, Christianity and Judaism share the Abraham of covenant, the
father of many and patriarch of the nation of Israel.A divisive figureDespite
the shared Biblical narrative, Abraham remains a divisive figure
between the two Biblical faiths, because for the Jews he is the very
model of a Torah-observant Jew — a perspective which is not so much
Biblical as Talmudic; but for Christians he is the man saved by faith, a
figure who stands opposed to continuing Jewish adherence to the Torah —
a perspective which is based more on Paul than on Genesis.There
are of course tensions even in Paul’s view of Abraham and his children
the Jews in general. On the one hand Paul extols Jewish identity, and
affirms the promises of God to the Jews as irrevocable (Romans
11:28-29). On the other hand, Paul castigates Jews for holding on to the
Torah in opposition — as he saw it — to salvation by faith, and for
seeking to impose the Torah upon Gentile believers. It is not, he
asserts, “the children of the flesh” who are the children of God, but
the “children of the promise” (Romans 9:8). The legacy of Abraham is
received by faith, not by adherence to the law (Romans 4:13): “For if
those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the
promise is worthless” (Romans 4:14).While
both Christianity and Judaism accept the Bible’s narrative that the
promise was passed on through Isaac (and not the older son Ishmael), the
idea that the children of Israel, Abraham’s grandson, are the people of
God’s promise has proved a stumbling block to Gentile Christianity.
Often Christianity has adopted a supersessionist theology which
dispenses with God’s covenant to the Jews, appropriating the title
“people of God” to Gentile Christianity, and displacing the Jews as the
beneficiaries of God’s promises to Abraham. This was already a theme of
early Christian thought: Paul’s Abraham of faith was used as a kind of
stick for beating Jews over the head. In this way Abraham has become a
core point of contention and division between Jews and Christians.Abraham in the QuranThe
later Jewish view of Abraham as the idol-destroying monotheist
developed in extra-biblical Jewish traditions. From there it passed over
— along with fragments of other Jewish traditions — into the Quran.
However, although this is a link between the Abraham of Jewish tradition
and the “Ibrahim” of the Quran, the Quran’s overall take on Abraham
diverges considerably from that of Genesis. The word appropriation rather than inheritance
is apposite. Ibrahim of the Quran is a very different figure from
Abraham, the “father of many” of Genesis: his function in theological
history and his relationship with God is very differently understood.What does the Quran have to say about Abraham?A
great deal. There are 69 verses in the Quran which mention Abraham by
name: he is the second most frequently mentioned Biblical figure after
Moses. Like other Biblical references found in the Quran, this material
appears to allude to Jewish traditions circulating in the 7th century
AD. The references do not show signs of being directly shaped or even
influenced to any degree by someone who was directly familiar with the
text of Genesis.Abraham
is a figure alluded to repeatedly throughout the Quran. Unlike the
Bible, the Quran normally does not have one specific section devoted to
telling the story of individuals — such as Genesis 12-25 which deals
with Abraham — but instead treats them allusively, making multiple
references, some of which are fragments of narratives, presented in a
way which implies that the reader is already familiar with the content
of the story.There
are allusions in the Quran to some Biblical stories connected to
Abraham. For example there are various references to the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah (e.g. Sura 26:160ff) and to the visit of the angels
to establish a covenant (e.g. Sura 11:69-73). There are also
extra-biblical stories taken from Jewish tradition such as the Talmudic
narratives of Abraham’s destruction of his father’s idols (Sura 21:58)
and being thrown into a fiery furnace, a trial he survived by the
miraculous intervention of God (Sura 21:68-70).Throughout
these scattered references, Abraham is presented as one in a long line
of prophets of Islam: Ibrahim of the Quran is prophet of Islam, a model
monotheist and opponent of idol worship. Some of the key points are as
follows:“He hath named you Muslims”Abraham is the one who gave the name Muslims to Allah’s followers:

And
strive for Allah with the endeavour which is His right. He hath chosen
you and hath not laid upon you in religion any hardship; the faith of
your father Abraham (is yours). He hath named you Muslims
of old time and in this (Scripture), that the messenger may be a
witness against you, and that ye may be witnesses against mankind. So
establish worship, pay the poor-due, and hold fast to Allah. He is your
Protecting friend. A blessed Patron and a blessed Helper! (Sura 22:78 -
Pickthall)

One true religionAbraham taught the same religion brought by Muhammad, the religion of Moses, Noah and Jesus:

He
hath ordained for you that religion which He commended unto Noah, and
that which We inspire in thee (Muhammad), and that which We commended
unto Abraham and Moses and Jesus, saying: Establish the religion, and be
not divided therein. Dreadful for the idolaters is that unto which thou
callest them. Allah chooseth for Himself whom He will, and guideth unto
Himself him who turneth (toward Him). (Sura 42:13)

Abraham had a bookAbraham,
consistent with Muhammad’s understanding of “prophets” and just like
Muhammad, had a “book” from God like that of Moses (i.e. like the Torah).

You
prefer the life of this world, but the hereafter is better and more
enduring. And this is in the Books of the earliest (revelations) — the
Books of Abraham and Moses. (Sura 87:16-19 Yusuf Ali)

Or
are they jealous of mankind because of that which Allah of His bounty
hath bestowed upon them? For We bestowed upon the house of Abraham (of
old) the Scripture and wisdom, and We bestowed on them a mighty kingdom.
(Sura 4:54; see also 19:41)

A model imamInstead
of calling Abraham “father of nations”, the Quran describes him as the
imam or “leader” of nations (Sura 2:124), and from his line other
“leaders” will come (including Muhammad). Thus instead of Abraham being a
blessing to the nations, he is a forerunner and model for future
“leaders”, and ultimately for Muhammad. This is reinforced by tracing
him as an ancestor of Muhammad by the line of Ishmael.Abraham
in the Quran adheres to core Islamic doctrines such as belief in
Judgement Day (Sura 2:126), which was anachronistic for Genesis: in the
Bible, this belief is only introduced much later, by the prophets.A model of hostility and hatredStrikingly, Abraham of the Quran also adheres to the same doctrine Muhammad taught of hatred and enmity to unbelievers:

There
is a goodly pattern for you in Abraham and those with him, when they
told their folk: Lo! we are guiltless of you and all that ye worship
beside Allah. We have done with you. And there hath arisen between us and you hostility and hate for ever until ye believe in Allah only
- save that which Abraham promised his father (when he said): I will
ask forgiveness for thee, though I own nothing for thee from Allah - Our
Lord! In Thee we put our trust, and unto Thee we turn repentant, and
unto Thee is the journeying. (Sura 60:4)

Mecca and IshmaelA
distinctive of Abraham in the Quran is the report that he and his son
Ishmael built the Kaaba in Mecca and established it as a place of
worship for Allah:

And
when We made the House (at Makka) a resort for mankind and sanctuary,
(saying): Take as your place of worship the place where Abraham stood
(to pray). And We imposed a duty upon Abraham and Ishmael, (saying):
Purify My house for those who go around and those who meditate therein
and those who bow down and prostrate themselves (in worship). (Sura
2:125)

And
when Abraham and Ishmael were raising the foundations of the House,
(Abraham prayed): Our Lord! Accept from us (this duty). Lo! Thou, only
Thou, art the Hearer, the Knower. (Sura 2:127)

Of course, as the English scholar Guillaume pointed out:

...
there is no historical evidence for the assertion that Abraham or
Ishmael was ever in Mecca, and if there had been such a tradition it
would have to be explained how all memory of the Old Semitic name
Ishmael … came to be lost. The form in the Quran is taken either from
Greek or Syriac sources.

The
point Guillaume was making is that the form of the name “Ishmael” found
in the Quran is borrowed from Greek and Syriac (from the Biblical
traditions). It is implausible that a tradition of the Kaaba being built
by Abraham and Ishmael could have been passed down and preserved only
in Greek and Syriac (i.e. Christian) traditions, while the name
“Ishmael” was forgotten by the Arabs for centuries.Hadiths or traditions of Muhammad (not the Quran) refer to the Akedah event, but in these traditions it is Ishmael who Abraham sacrificed, not Isaac. Notably,
the Quran refers to Ishmael as a prophet of God like Abraham, and
within a litany of what the Bible calls patriarchs and the Quran calls
“prophets” the name Ishmael can be found. Jacob himself names Ishmael
among his “fathers”:

Or
were ye present when death came to Jacob, when he said unto his sons:
What will ye worship after me? They said: We shall worship thy God, the
God of thy fathers, Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac, One God, and unto Him
we have surrendered. (Sura 2:133)

However, in other places there is reference to “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” without naming Ishmael.The religion of Abraham was IslamWhat
is particularly interesting in the Quran – and a key point for this
presentation – is that it is in the Quran that the expression “the
religion of Abraham” is to be found. This is repeated several times.What
is the meaning of this Quranic phrase, the “religion of Abraham”? The
meaning is made clear when the Quran commends the “religion of Abraham”
to Jews and Christians, rebuking them for having rejecting it:

Say: Allah speaketh truth. So follow the religion of Abraham, the upright. He was not of the idolaters. (Sura 3:95)

Say: O People of the Scripture! Why disbelieve ye in the revelations of Allah, when Allah (Himself) is Witness of what ye do? (Sura 3:98)

Say: O People of the Scripture! Why drive ye back believers from the way of Allah, seeking to make it crooked, when ye are witnesses (to Allah's guidance)? Allah is not unaware of what ye do. (Sura 3:99)

Muslims also are commanded to follow the “religion of Abraham” as the religion of Muhammad:

And afterward We inspired thee (Muhammad, saying): Follow the religion of Abraham, as one by nature upright. He was not of the idolaters. (Sura 16:123)

Thus, according to the Quran, it is Islam, in contrast to
Christianity and Judaism, which is the religion of Abraham. It is the
followers of Muhammad who have the “best claim” to Abraham:

Lo! those of mankind who have the best claim to Abraham
are those who followed him, and this Prophet and those who believe
(with him); and Allah is the Protecting Guardian of the believers. (Sura
3:68; see also 4:125)

Abraham was neither a Christian nor a JewChristians
and Jews are rebuked for commending their faith to the Arabs. Muslims,
the Quran asserts, follow the religion of Abraham, not the religion of
idolaters:

And they say: Be Jews or Christians, then ye will be rightly guided. Say (unto them, O Muhammad): Nay, but (we follow) the religion of Abraham, the upright, and he was not of the idolaters. (Sura 2:135)

Say
(O Muslims): We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and
that which was revealed unto Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and
Jacob, and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and that
which the prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction
between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered. (Sura 2:136)

The Quran claims that Abraham was “neither a Christian nor a Jew”:

O
People of the Scripture! Why will ye argue about Abraham, when the
Torah and the Gospel were not revealed till after him? Have ye then no
sense? (Sura 3:65)

Abraham was not a Jew, nor yet a Christian; but he was an upright man (hanif) who had surrendered (to Allah), and he was not of the idolaters. (Sura 3:67)

Or
say ye that Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes
were Jews or Christians? Say: Do ye know best, or doth Allah? And who is
more unjust than he who hideth a testimony which he hath received from
Allah? Allah is not unaware of what ye do. (Sura 2:140)

Muslims must accept AbrahamIndeed
it is an article of faith that Muslims are commanded to “make no
distinction” between the messengers — i.e. they should accept Abraham
just as they accept Muhammad.Following
Muhammad is following Abraham (Sura 2:285, 4:152). Another way of
putting this is that if you accept Abraham as a prophet of Allah, you
should also “make no distinction” and accept Muhammad:

Lo!
We inspire thee [Muhammad] as We inspired Noah and the prophets after
him, as We inspired Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the
tribes, and Jesus and Job and Jonah and Aaron and Solomon, and as We
imparted unto David the Psalms; (Sura 4:163)

The prototypical MuslimFrom
the Quran’s perspective, Abraham was the prototypical Muslim. He is
used by Muhammad in the Quran as a stick to beat over the heads of
Christians and Jews. This arises for example in the context of
Muhammad’s disputes with the Jews of Medina (specifically in this Sura:
4:44-57, 156-162). Muhammad is in effect saying, “You quote the name
Abraham to me, but Abraham was a Muslim, one of a long line of prophets.
If you accept Abraham, you must accept me.”Islam is the true Judaism and the true ChristianityNot
only Abraham, but Moses and Jesus were Muslim prophets according to the
Quran. So Islam is the true heritage of Jews and Christians. Jews and
Christians who convert to Islam are actually reverting to the faith of
the patriarchs, returning to the one true religion.An Abrahamic political vision for AmericaAccording to this view, the “religion of Abraham” is a kind of code for Islam’s precedence over all other religions. Islamic da’wa or mission to Christians and Jews involves calling them to the “religion of Abraham,” i.e. to Islam. Shamin A. Siddiqi of Flushing, New York put this position in a letter to Daniel Pipes:

Abraham,
Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were all prophets of Islam. Islam is the
common heritage of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim community of America, and
establishing the Kingdom of God is the joint responsibility of all three
Abrahamic faiths. Islam was the din (faith,
way of life) of both Jews and Christians, who later lost it through
human innovations. Now the Muslims want to remind their Jews and
Christian brothers and sisters of their original din. These are the facts of history.

This
vision, clothed in harmonious-sounding language, in fact is of a
sharia-compliant United States led by Muslims and created with the help
of Jews and Christians. It is “Abrahamic” in the sense that it is
Islamic, as Islam is the common heritage of the three faiths. And within
this vision of sharia America, non-Muslims should be relegated to the
subservient role of promoters of Islam.Today
the phrase “Abrahamic religion” has become a touchstone of interfaith
dialogue and unity between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. But
ironically this phrase is another rendering of the “religion of Abraham”
of the Quran: the phrase refers to Abraham as a Muslim. Abraham a Figure of Division Between the Three FaithsIn
reality Abraham is an intensely divisive figure between Jews,
Christians and Muslims. For many Christians he is the apostle of
salvation by faith alone, in opposition to Torah-observance. For Jews he
is the Torah-observant father of the Jewish nation, and a reminder of
God’s irrevocable covenant with the Jews. For Muslims he is the
prototypical Muslim prophet, a prominent forerunner and validator of
Muhammad’s claim and the ground of Muslim claims that Islam both
predates and supersedes the Biblical faiths.The Origins of the Expression “Abrahamic Religion”I
have been tracing the origins of the concept of “Abrahamic faith” in
reference to monotheistic dialogue. Its most important and influential
promoter was a Lebanese Maronite priest, Youakim Moubarac, following in
the footsteps of his teacher, Massignon, who regarded Islam as a faith
of genuine revelation — and Muhammad as a prophet — but in more
primitive stage than Christianity.Moubarac devoted his 1951 doctoral dissertation Abraham dans le Coran
to the topic of Abraham in Islam. He was subsequently a significant
influence on Vatican II’s policy on Islam, which has shaped the current
Catholic catechism, which sees Islam and Christianity as united by
adoration of the one God:

841
The Church's relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also
includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst
whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.” [330]

An Abrahamic utopia and dhimmi theologyMoubarac
saw in the theme of Abrahamic faith a force which could unite
Christians, Jews and Arabs into one family. Thus he wrote that one
should “promote an egalitarian Palestine in which Jews, Christians and
Muslims demonstrate together its abrahamic and ecumenical vocation.”This
vision of a political and spiritual reconciliation between faiths based
upon a shared identity as followers of “Abrahamic faith” is
fundamentally flawed. In fact it leads to Islamization, as a society
based on the Quranic concept of Abrahamic faith is a sharia state, which
by virtue of the structure of Islamic law, is devoted to the decline
and ultimate disappearance of Christianity and Judaism.It should not be surprising that a Christian from a dhimmi
background, from a nation traumatized by the massacres of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, would produce an quintessential dhimmi
theology, one which offers to Christians the option of serving Islam by
embracing the legitimacy of Islam and thus of Muslim power. Bat Ye’or
writes:

Moubarac interpreted the end of Christian political power [i.e.
in Lebanon] as a religious liberation which would restore to the Church
the vocation that Islam had assigned to it: a service of charity and
love toward Muslims. (Islam and Dhimmitude p. 183.)

The
promotion of “Abrahamic faith” as the touchstone of interfaith
religious dialogue was linked in its origins with a vision of a Middle
Eastern utopia in which Christians, Muslims and Jews would live side by
side in unity. In reality this vision encouraged Islamophile church
leaders in Lebanon to fight alongside Palestinians to destroy the
political and national structures of Christianity in Lebanon. The
ultimate outcome has been, and will continue to be, the progressive
Islamization of that nation and destruction of the church – in
accordance with the internal goals of Islamic doctrine, a process which
is now reaching end-game stage in Iraq and perhaps also Syria.Rowan Williams on Sharia law in EuropeI
am minded to recall the previous Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan
Williams’s suggestion that the British embrace aspects of Sharia law,
claiming that “It is not as if we’re bringing in an alien and rival
system.” Undoubtedly Williams’ views were based upon his experiences of
interfaith dialogue, which had schooled him in the underlying unity of
the Abrahamic faiths. Thus he became an apologist for sharia law and its
alien and abhorrent treatment of women: the pointy end of Williams’s
proposal is of course the entrenchment of sharia courts in the UK, which
are not good for the rights of Muslim women. By making this statement
he became, albeit unwittingly, an apologist for the sharia itself,
including by implication its demand that Muslims be politically
dominant. ConclusionThe
concept of “Abrahamic faiths” is a fallacy. Its contemporary influence
was, tragically, born out of a century of Christian suffering in the
Middle East and foisted upon the unsuspecting West. It is reasonable to
ask whether this is a theological Trojan horse designed to promote an
Islamic worldview of relations between faiths. By
all means, let us discuss Abraham and what he stands for in different
faiths, and note that the narratives of the three monotheistic faiths
refer to Abraham. But it is unwise to take Abraham as a touchstone of
unity and theological continuity. On the contrary, the name of Abraham
stands for the profound divisions between the three monotheistic faiths.

______________

Dr Mark Durie
is a theologian, human rights activist and pastor of an Anglican
church. He has published many articles and books on the language and
culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious
freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the
Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the
University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow
of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992. at the University
of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the
Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992. The Third Choice, Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom is reviewed under the title Dhimmitude Dominates and excerpted in the New English Review. An interview with Dr. Durie can be found in The West Speaks published by the New English Review Press. He also is a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

3 comments:

Thank you. May I add that just because a cult claims 'Abraham' as a previous prophet does not ligitimise the cult's teachings. It would be a Fallacy of Association in reverse. And there are many cults in the past and in recent times which based their teachings on extrapolations of the bible, ie Jim Jones and David Koresh: anyone with charisma can do that.

Very helpful article. On a matter of language would it not be better to drop the word 'story' or 'stories' when refering to Biblical narrative which should be understood as history? A word like account or record or history. To use 'story' in contexts where historic narrative is written implies something less than actual happenings but rather something akin to 'made up stories'.

I regard the phrase as a slur. New Atheists have often used this phrase as a lazy way of tar and feathering three major religions that have significant differences. Besides, Abraham didn't found Christianity or Islam. There is no such thing as an "Abrahamic religion."